Prior art being unpatentable, the playing of Go is not much widely suggested. In fact they don't much suggest anything easy, simple, or relatively available. Go is different than Sudoku and crosswords because it relies on mental processing more than pure mental recall; you have to analyze the board and determine what to recall all over the place, and then analyze various combinations, possible permutations, advantages, disadvantages... it's rather complex mental processing.
It's somewhat well established that mental activity keeps the brain healthy, and it's been suggested that such things prevent parkinsons and alzheimers; hell, even basic motor skills are considered helpful, so much that playing guitar or piano or using chopsticks all are known to at least partially protect the mind from decay to some level. Go is, of course, one of the more mentally challenging activities out there, demanding both logical and abstract reasoning, analytical calculation and recall; while piano or guitar has the added advantage of keeping fine control of the body nimble (Go is basically all mental, while instruments are physically and mentally demanding).
None of this shit is profitable.
I can't sell you a never-ending prescription to Go, or put you under nursing care of a piano home. You buy a piano or a guitar or a Go set (or get on KGS or IGS or Dragon for free) and you play.
Why in the hell would I want to fund long-running research into this, much less publicly suggest it, or encourage it? It doesn't make me any money, and might solve a problem before I can make money off the problem.
It turns out you can get patents on human DNA sequences for some reason. It also turns out you can sue researchers such that the only researchers that make any progress are dependent on paying fees to you or being sued into the ground. Making money off other peoples' work by being a gatekeeper providing no value is an amazing way to get rich, and it doesn't even help anyone, and you get to poise yourself as some amazing benevolent entity with access to (read: control of) all this innovative knowledge.
This whole warrior-philosopher meme crops up a lot. Remember the Knights of the Round Table, and English Chivalry?
Yes and it's a shame we didn't propagate the concept of chivalry through the general population. All that shit died out ages and ages ago; chivalry is dead. That said, I've never heard of English knights sitting around pondering their own existence and the beauty of life; but then such stories are only glorifications for the modern idiot, so maybe Sir Lancelot spent several hours a day meditating on the meaning of his existence and trying to understand the justifications both for lifting his sword and leaving it lie (both actions have consequences offensive to life).
Yes and we destroyed their entire society and their entire culture doing it. Japan was a more mature, but still errant culture: they understood things like honor and dignity, they took up arms as a mode of philosophy. Japanese warriors (samurai) spend their time meditating on life, which is why you see them wandering around tending their gardens and watching cherry blossoms bloom (how's that for manly?). Warriors are engaged in a struggle for life, and when they stop fighting they may as well lay down and die; they fight to protect themselves and those who cannot or who simply want to live their lives.
Japan's cultural error was one of a disconnect between philosophy and behavior--a common problem seen in all cultures. They were vicious on the battlefield, and they didn't spare non-combatants as a rule. You were greatly fortunate to be occupied by Japanese forces, because as long as you behaved they would probably treat you with respect, although they would definitely assume dictatorial command. Unfortunately, often times Japanese forces simply entered a town and killed every man, woman, and child they encountered with no discrimination; this was a great cultural failing.
If we ignore the actual implementation, the Japanese seem like they were rather perfect at the time: they had strong respect for life and a strong sense of honor, which is a fancy word for "accountability to yourself for your actions." They needed to unify this philosophy with their behavior. We instead took this philosophy away from them entirely, and made a horrific mess out of their society by forcing Western merchant culture into it. So much damage....
Look at the rest of the world. Power-mad leaders, self-righteous pompous bastards in the streets. We want to loudly proclaim our strong sense of right and wrong, we want to trample over everyone around us and force them to bend to our system of beliefs, and we'll use any method necessary. Our leaders will manipulate the political sphere and let innocents suffer to further our goals; they'll hire terrorists while proclaiming their vehement stance against terrorism. Accountability is only to the public eye: they only care about saving their own political face, and have no guilt over their actions.
And yet we claim we can somehow make the world a perfect place, force everyone to play nice, we have all these high ideals. We constantly talk about how "war should never exist," while starting tons of wars. There are countries where weapons and even basic self defense skills are banned--you cannot teach martial arts in some places, it is criminal, and these are "advanced" and "enlightened" countries like New Zealand or Australia (there are a few cities in Australia that ban the teaching of martial arts because they don't want to "encourage" violence). The children believe they can remove the teeth and claws from the rabbit and tell the wolf to play nice.
And the people. Look at the people. No philosophy, no honor. A culture of consumerism everywhere, buy buy buy, show off your flashy new stuff for social status. The bystander effect is everywhere: people are honorless cowards who won't stand up for anyone else, they will walk away from fights and from rape because it's "not my problem" and "I don't want to get involved," and to hell with the victim. We want the government to tax us and pay poor people so we never have to take personal responsibility for helping any individual, so we can look at them beg in the street and say, "It's not my problem, I pay my taxes, the government should take care of them." And when we fall to their level, we believe the same thing: people pay taxes, we're entitled to the government just taking care of us.
We took something that wasn't perfect and made it worse. The opposite of spirituality is materialism, a culture of buy-buy-buy everything you see and money is your god. Religion is spirituality turned outward (responsibility offloaded to some deity you must follow), vanity is materialism turned inward; philosophy is spirituality turned inward (responsibility loaded squarely onto yourself), consumerism is materialism turned outward.
OR Norelco electric shaver. New: $40. Replacement blades: $32. WTF!!!
Feather Artist Club. More expensive, but the replacement blades are $20 a dozen and last 7-10 shaves--admittedly expensive. A Merkur HD and the Gillette 7 O'Clock yellow packs works pretty well, $30 for about 100 of those blades but $40 for the razor itself. Still, it costs about $25-$50 for a brush that'll last only 30 or 40 years and about $10 for a good puck of shave soap that'll last maybe a year, so eh.
Some people need to be told to shut the fuck up about a hundred times before they get it. Motivational and style-type books are an exercise in repeatedly showing you why you're an ass. Sure everyone says "be brief," but I have so much shit to cover, and what do you mean no one cares? After a dozen examples, explanations, and breakdowns, you start to see a pattern of "that's a great pitch!" "Oh... that's really annoying, and nobody gives a shit about anything except the last 2 paragraphs here..."
Wait, he works as a tax assessor for the government, and they call that "welfare"? Do we call corporate accountants "beggars" now too because they accept hand-outs from corporations for their whole life?
Because they go supercritical faster and need a higher acceleration with more precision. An implosion type HE Uranium bomb only needs "perfect spherical implosion" to a certain degree of precision at a certain pressure with a certain amount of energy; but plutonium fisses so quickly that you need a lot more force, and your precision needs to be higher i.e. a more completely perfect sphere of implosion pressure, otherwise the bomb fizzles out. Gun-type plutonium bombs need the projectile to reach a speed not physically possible to achieve without making the bomb extremely heavy (thick walls to handle the explosive force and a much larger explosive charge)
It's hard to ignite that kind of explosion because you need to get an atomic reaction: how do you detonate a full cup of water at the same time? It takes lots of energy input.
Exactly. It's easy to build an atomic bomb, hell I can build a detonator for i.e. dynamite from shit on my office desk and the magnets out of a hard drive we're going to wipe next week. There's no dynamite in my office, no nitroglycerin, no nitrocellulose, no other appropriate explosives... so it's pretty much harmless, I could use it to light an LED maybe just to be funny. In the same way, an atomic bomb mechanism is pretty useless without 4700 pounds of C4 high explosive and a chunk of enriched fissile material.
I was particularly attacking the "enlightened thinker" argument because it left a bad taste in my mouth. Base ethics are non-relative because they have to do with a feeling of personal security in society in general; finer details are extremely relative, and in fact the mode of economic and political function that is best for a society will change over time (although leaders will consistently ignore that and do what's best for THEM at the expense of society).
A lot of people think they're right and everyone else is wrong. If you actually read my argument, you'll have trouble finding a solid point: there isn't one. I made a pretty good recommendation for a general healthcare system that makes a "best effort" or whatever, but in the end it's still "we don't know how to handle this really" "needs to be adjusted up or down based on cost-benefit" etc. In the end you need to say, "In what way is society as a whole better off; by how much; and what was the cost to get there?" If the cost is huge and the benefit is small overall and only isolated to a small part of society (note it may be huge to that segment--i.e. life-saving for 5 people a year--but small to society as a whole--5 lives per year is really nothing, and sufficient economic cost will significantly impact more than 5 lives in a significant negative way), then tough shit for that part of society. It is uncomfortable when said out loud, ne? But when you force yourself to look at the numbers, you start to twitch and stutter trying to argue, because both arguments become uncomfortable moral dilemma.
And that is my point: "civilized" societies are like children. They want to save everyone; they want to save the butterfly from the spider, but the spider starves to death. They want to take the teeth and claws away from the rabbit and tell it to play nice with the fox, but the fox is going to eat it (i.e. non-violence zero-tolerance bullshit; you might be able to win a fight, but you won't want to mug someone that is going to send you off with their purse and a broken arm). They want to run away from uncomfortable truths and instead look at other uncomfortable truths and say, "We should fix this!"
It's nice that you want to help people--and you should! But you also need to understand that there is a balance to the world, and that you need to tip it gently to maximize the benefit. I want homeless people to be miserable and hungry on the street covering their face with a newspaper to keep from getting sunburned; I don't want them to be miserable and starving on the street covering their face to hide the rotting flesh from the infections and sores they have because they can't find even the smallest bits of food or the most basic of medical care or even clean their body and their clothes. I know it's harsh, but I can probably reach that goal with 1% of my taxes; giving them all apartments, food, and world-class medical care would take like a third of everyone's paycheck in taxes. Living on the street sucks, but I don't want it to suck that fucking bad; if I could magic up a perfect world I would, but I can't, so we must find the balance.
That is enlightenment. Or at least a step along the path; just as you will never reach true enlightenment, you will never reach the perfect world, even one where we haven't saved everyone but we've done the absolute best we can. The economic climate, the cultural climate, the political climate changes; what we can and can't do changes; we have to ease up or we can put more in, sometimes it becomes cheaper because technology makes things better and we can supply things that would cost 10 times more before for only 1% additional cost (say non-invasive surgery that corrects a chronic condition and costs about 20 minutes of time, nearly no materials, using a $10,000 machine with $2000/year maintenance cycle-- where before it was a $250,000 operation. Well, now we can supply that to everyone for damn near nothing, and the cost to society is near nothing
This is a fundamental part of enlightenment thinking, and one of the cornerstones of liberal democracies.
Another fundamental part of enlightened thinking is that there is a balance: if 1% complain their rights are being trampled (and they're right), but in order to ensure their human rights (in whole or in part) we have to trample the rights of the other 99%, then too fucking bad. This argument is often lost in various terms of wealth redistribution, where people are all-for or all-against; both sides are wrong. Yes, poor people inherently have a right to life and comfort, food and shelter, cleanliness, etc; unfortunately, we can't save everyone, and we can't give them everything, and we shouldn't say "well anything above X is too much so we'll take 100%--sorry, let's be fair then--95% of your money above there."
For this discussion I'm going to avoid arguing semantics and citations on whether a position is "correct" or not. If you think my assessment of what's feasible is wrong, good for you; I don't, and I don't care to argue it. There is a more subtle point here, so try to get it.
My current stock example is healthcare. In a nutshell, insurance is an exclusive voluntary wealth redistribution scheme: you pay into it for benefit, but we can kick you out. There are rules that give you rights (can't just say oh you're expensive, bye now), but also rules that you must follow (if you defraud the system, you're gone). Unfortunately supporting EVERYONE is expensive, and anyone with pre-existing conditions is stuck with them lest they game the system (and besides, it's a fast way to relieve a load). This is why you try to stay continuously insured throughout your life. A system that attempts to provide 100% healthcare for everyone in all situations will necessarily collapse, and all systems that purport to are imperfect due to costs (hell, even free-market systems are imperfect due to costs and practicality).
So now that the stage is set, I'll take the obvious stance opposite yours first; there's a follow-up later, so try to absorb this. You've probably heard it before. Supplying socialized healthcare is a failed plan: it's expensive, it forces everyone to pay for everyone else, the homeless on the street with no job (lazy or unfortunate, it is indifferentiable) are simply too much of a drain on the rest of society to do this. We can't care for them like puppies while they rack up tons and tons of healthcare costs and time, clogging the system and preventing healthier people from maintaining their health (no, the stance "this person is worse off, so it's okay that you should be dragged into a pit of eternal suffering so that they can be raised up to parity with that level of suffering as well" is not "enlightened": now you have two people in a shit situation, one who is in a less-shit situation and one who was just fine that is now miserable).
The stock argument I've been making lately, however, is based around a simple observation: The middle and upper class are effectively all cared for, and the system doesn't collapse. Why? Doesn't that invalidate my above argument? It's not an "exclusive" system so much as it's "anyone who has the money can get in."
Actually, no, not entirely.
Homeless people, poor people, people who can't afford health insurance, they are all in essence dirty street rats. They live on the streets, don't eat well, eat garbage, don't shower, they lead stressful lives, expose themselves to constant health hazards, etc. Insuring these people is infeasible because they are so god damn unhealthy--and insuring the entire middle class is feasible exactly because wealth translates to health indirectly, due to access to better food and cleaner facilities and shelter and clothes and lower stress. The poor are often substance abusers for reasons I don't entirely understand--they smoke and they drink a lot, and cigarette and alcohol taxes are really taxes on poor people more than anything.
The even cooler news is 1/7.3 or 13.7% of their users migrated away in one month. Imagine Slashdot losing 10 million users? That happens like every day; the flux is probably on the order of 40 million. When you don't have 2.8 billion page hits an hour though, losing ten or twenty million users is pretty big.
A little editorial, it's really sad how many people don't know
how to play chess anymore. I mean, it's gotta be in the 95%
range for people younger than 30.
And then when I do find someone to play... I can't even dig
into the database cause it's not like they are going to be really
any good. [Lucky if they can remember the moves]
Heck I'm glad computers can "play chess".
Take up Go, if you have the time. http://www.gokgs.com/ for lots of online play. It might break your brain though.
A computer beating another computer is not the same as a computer beating a human that the other computer beat. Go playing computers often resign when they are behind and see no way to get ahead, for example; higher level players will assess if there is still aji, and try, and sometimes win. In many cases it takes subtle plays that are ill-understood; some things only Go Seigen can do, because nobody else in the world can see like he does.
There are many types of successful Go players with very different strategies in the upper ranks. Go Seigen was the best: his plays are subtle, impossible for anyone else to see coming and sometimes hard to understand even once they're played. Not understanding your opponent's move is the first step to losing (unless he doesn't understand it either). Go Seigen is amazing, but he is not an all-powerful Goban-dominating god; he is, to a degree, only marginally better than other players whose strategies basically entail "oh fuck it, I'll just grab some territory here while threatening an invasion that's never going to work anyway" (invasion doesn't work because it's easily blocked, but the other guy HAS to block).
Computer chess players I don't believe can really do some of the things humans can either. Humans will see things, start following a path that ends badly for them, but notice that it lines them up for a quick assassination: in chess, you only have to checkmate. Humans will, in Go, see plays that allow for numerous varied strategies, contingency plans: not just sequences of moves, but ideas like "expand moyo here, or reduce their moyo this way, in either case forming two eyes as I go, invading first and then retreating to solidify my position." We just look, see sequences of dozens of moves, then start scattering possible "if I didn't get this or that" (because my opponent plays every turn too) and recognizing where we would have blocked etc to prevent cuts, squeezes, and the like, and what plays are serious threats, making up microstrategies and assembling them.
I dislike Chess, it is a child's game for simple minds; but humans will always have a creative edge that may give them a leg-up over a "better" computer player. Humans do shit you don't expect, and they see shit that you can't work out. We think abstractly.
Agreed. Punitive retaliation should be non-serious. Don't deliver a knock-out blow to the head (brain damage), but a lash across the face is painful and distressing and... harmless. A proper body blow is also harmless. Punching someone in the throat can be fatal, easily. Negative reinforcement is awesome, because as long as I can get away with it without personal danger I'm pretty good; but I really hate being backhanded across the face, even if it's relatively harmless.
Go in the Olympics would be ridiculous. I guess something like a 45 min match with 3 x 30 second byo-yomi would be normal (there are some professional tournaments like this), or Canadian byo-yomi (10/25 would be appropriate), but really have you seen the Mejin cup?
Curling involves enough strategy and rapid computation to be a semi-mental sport suitable for the Olympics. Go is awesome, but I think it's misplaced in a competition that revolves around running, pole vaulting, throwing shit, sticking an ice skate in your ass and going balls-first down an ice chute, etc. Archery should be an Olympic sport; if you want to put Go in there, you need a different kind of collective competition (like, mind olympics or some shit, Go/Shogi (fuck Western chess)/Scrabble/Luzanqi (or Stratego, which may be better) and so on).
Seriously? Go matches last like 2-3 days, played in 12 hour rounds. 36 hours is pretty normal. In the amateur sphere, we'll play a game in anywhere from 15 with 5 x 30 sec Byo-Yomi (you get 5, after 30 seconds you use it up, but if you don't take 30 seconds to make the move then the move is not made and you have 30 seconds next round... so if you play 15 moves, 3 of which take more than 30 seconds but less than 60, you have 2 Byo-Yomi periods remaining) to 30 minutes with 5 x 30 or with 10/25 canadian Byo-Yomi (10 minutes to make 25 plays, after 25 moves it resets to 15 minutes again). Professionals, however, will burn 10 hours in the first 50 moves.
You mean like worthless poor fucktards in the city that have an expensive-looking, shiny car but a really shitty house they can barely afford mortgage or heating on, but they do have a 53 inch plasma TV; and the ones that can't afford a shiny car instead lease a BMW so they have a BMW to show off how fucking cool they are driving a 710?
And this is another reason I play Go. When I level up on KGS, and then go to Starbucks and play some kid, I bring my level with me: if I can beat 8kyus this week on KGS, I can beat an 8kyu kid in a coffee shop that was whooping me last month. When you get banned from WoW, you have to start back at level 1.
Chess has some pretty weird aspects that stem from its simplicity.
Try playing Go. The cheating mechanism is called the Sleeve of God. The game is played taking alternate turns placing non-moving pieces that all have exactly the same value. Captures are made by completely contact-surrounding groups, with contact on the four cardinal directions.
Slashdot Mirror
Where are these illegal underaged girls? How much am I being paid to not go investigating this and thus not really know if this is a joke?
Prior art being unpatentable, the playing of Go is not much widely suggested. In fact they don't much suggest anything easy, simple, or relatively available. Go is different than Sudoku and crosswords because it relies on mental processing more than pure mental recall; you have to analyze the board and determine what to recall all over the place, and then analyze various combinations, possible permutations, advantages, disadvantages... it's rather complex mental processing.
It's somewhat well established that mental activity keeps the brain healthy, and it's been suggested that such things prevent parkinsons and alzheimers; hell, even basic motor skills are considered helpful, so much that playing guitar or piano or using chopsticks all are known to at least partially protect the mind from decay to some level. Go is, of course, one of the more mentally challenging activities out there, demanding both logical and abstract reasoning, analytical calculation and recall; while piano or guitar has the added advantage of keeping fine control of the body nimble (Go is basically all mental, while instruments are physically and mentally demanding).
None of this shit is profitable.
I can't sell you a never-ending prescription to Go, or put you under nursing care of a piano home. You buy a piano or a guitar or a Go set (or get on KGS or IGS or Dragon for free) and you play.
Why in the hell would I want to fund long-running research into this, much less publicly suggest it, or encourage it? It doesn't make me any money, and might solve a problem before I can make money off the problem.
It turns out you can get patents on human DNA sequences for some reason. It also turns out you can sue researchers such that the only researchers that make any progress are dependent on paying fees to you or being sued into the ground. Making money off other peoples' work by being a gatekeeper providing no value is an amazing way to get rich, and it doesn't even help anyone, and you get to poise yourself as some amazing benevolent entity with access to (read: control of) all this innovative knowledge.
They can all go to hell.
This whole warrior-philosopher meme crops up a lot. Remember the Knights of the Round Table, and English Chivalry?
Yes and it's a shame we didn't propagate the concept of chivalry through the general population. All that shit died out ages and ages ago; chivalry is dead. That said, I've never heard of English knights sitting around pondering their own existence and the beauty of life; but then such stories are only glorifications for the modern idiot, so maybe Sir Lancelot spent several hours a day meditating on the meaning of his existence and trying to understand the justifications both for lifting his sword and leaving it lie (both actions have consequences offensive to life).
I don't understand this "time flow" thing, it seems very buzzy and meaningless.
History books are written by the winner.
Yes and we destroyed their entire society and their entire culture doing it. Japan was a more mature, but still errant culture: they understood things like honor and dignity, they took up arms as a mode of philosophy. Japanese warriors (samurai) spend their time meditating on life, which is why you see them wandering around tending their gardens and watching cherry blossoms bloom (how's that for manly?). Warriors are engaged in a struggle for life, and when they stop fighting they may as well lay down and die; they fight to protect themselves and those who cannot or who simply want to live their lives.
Japan's cultural error was one of a disconnect between philosophy and behavior--a common problem seen in all cultures. They were vicious on the battlefield, and they didn't spare non-combatants as a rule. You were greatly fortunate to be occupied by Japanese forces, because as long as you behaved they would probably treat you with respect, although they would definitely assume dictatorial command. Unfortunately, often times Japanese forces simply entered a town and killed every man, woman, and child they encountered with no discrimination; this was a great cultural failing.
If we ignore the actual implementation, the Japanese seem like they were rather perfect at the time: they had strong respect for life and a strong sense of honor, which is a fancy word for "accountability to yourself for your actions." They needed to unify this philosophy with their behavior. We instead took this philosophy away from them entirely, and made a horrific mess out of their society by forcing Western merchant culture into it. So much damage....
Look at the rest of the world. Power-mad leaders, self-righteous pompous bastards in the streets. We want to loudly proclaim our strong sense of right and wrong, we want to trample over everyone around us and force them to bend to our system of beliefs, and we'll use any method necessary. Our leaders will manipulate the political sphere and let innocents suffer to further our goals; they'll hire terrorists while proclaiming their vehement stance against terrorism. Accountability is only to the public eye: they only care about saving their own political face, and have no guilt over their actions.
And yet we claim we can somehow make the world a perfect place, force everyone to play nice, we have all these high ideals. We constantly talk about how "war should never exist," while starting tons of wars. There are countries where weapons and even basic self defense skills are banned--you cannot teach martial arts in some places, it is criminal, and these are "advanced" and "enlightened" countries like New Zealand or Australia (there are a few cities in Australia that ban the teaching of martial arts because they don't want to "encourage" violence). The children believe they can remove the teeth and claws from the rabbit and tell the wolf to play nice.
And the people. Look at the people. No philosophy, no honor. A culture of consumerism everywhere, buy buy buy, show off your flashy new stuff for social status. The bystander effect is everywhere: people are honorless cowards who won't stand up for anyone else, they will walk away from fights and from rape because it's "not my problem" and "I don't want to get involved," and to hell with the victim. We want the government to tax us and pay poor people so we never have to take personal responsibility for helping any individual, so we can look at them beg in the street and say, "It's not my problem, I pay my taxes, the government should take care of them." And when we fall to their level, we believe the same thing: people pay taxes, we're entitled to the government just taking care of us.
We took something that wasn't perfect and made it worse. The opposite of spirituality is materialism, a culture of buy-buy-buy everything you see and money is your god. Religion is spirituality turned outward (responsibility offloaded to some deity you must follow), vanity is materialism turned inward; philosophy is spirituality turned inward (responsibility loaded squarely onto yourself), consumerism is materialism turned outward.
OR Norelco electric shaver. New: $40. Replacement blades: $32. WTF!!!
Feather Artist Club. More expensive, but the replacement blades are $20 a dozen and last 7-10 shaves--admittedly expensive. A Merkur HD and the Gillette 7 O'Clock yellow packs works pretty well, $30 for about 100 of those blades but $40 for the razor itself. Still, it costs about $25-$50 for a brush that'll last only 30 or 40 years and about $10 for a good puck of shave soap that'll last maybe a year, so eh.
Some people need to be told to shut the fuck up about a hundred times before they get it. Motivational and style-type books are an exercise in repeatedly showing you why you're an ass. Sure everyone says "be brief," but I have so much shit to cover, and what do you mean no one cares? After a dozen examples, explanations, and breakdowns, you start to see a pattern of "that's a great pitch!" "Oh... that's really annoying, and nobody gives a shit about anything except the last 2 paragraphs here..."
Sun went under long, long before it became FOSS friendly. Java was a failure.
Wait, he works as a tax assessor for the government, and they call that "welfare"? Do we call corporate accountants "beggars" now too because they accept hand-outs from corporations for their whole life?
Because they go supercritical faster and need a higher acceleration with more precision. An implosion type HE Uranium bomb only needs "perfect spherical implosion" to a certain degree of precision at a certain pressure with a certain amount of energy; but plutonium fisses so quickly that you need a lot more force, and your precision needs to be higher i.e. a more completely perfect sphere of implosion pressure, otherwise the bomb fizzles out. Gun-type plutonium bombs need the projectile to reach a speed not physically possible to achieve without making the bomb extremely heavy (thick walls to handle the explosive force and a much larger explosive charge)
It's hard to ignite that kind of explosion because you need to get an atomic reaction: how do you detonate a full cup of water at the same time? It takes lots of energy input.
Exactly. It's easy to build an atomic bomb, hell I can build a detonator for i.e. dynamite from shit on my office desk and the magnets out of a hard drive we're going to wipe next week. There's no dynamite in my office, no nitroglycerin, no nitrocellulose, no other appropriate explosives... so it's pretty much harmless, I could use it to light an LED maybe just to be funny. In the same way, an atomic bomb mechanism is pretty useless without 4700 pounds of C4 high explosive and a chunk of enriched fissile material.
I was particularly attacking the "enlightened thinker" argument because it left a bad taste in my mouth. Base ethics are non-relative because they have to do with a feeling of personal security in society in general; finer details are extremely relative, and in fact the mode of economic and political function that is best for a society will change over time (although leaders will consistently ignore that and do what's best for THEM at the expense of society).
A lot of people think they're right and everyone else is wrong. If you actually read my argument, you'll have trouble finding a solid point: there isn't one. I made a pretty good recommendation for a general healthcare system that makes a "best effort" or whatever, but in the end it's still "we don't know how to handle this really" "needs to be adjusted up or down based on cost-benefit" etc. In the end you need to say, "In what way is society as a whole better off; by how much; and what was the cost to get there?" If the cost is huge and the benefit is small overall and only isolated to a small part of society (note it may be huge to that segment--i.e. life-saving for 5 people a year--but small to society as a whole--5 lives per year is really nothing, and sufficient economic cost will significantly impact more than 5 lives in a significant negative way), then tough shit for that part of society. It is uncomfortable when said out loud, ne? But when you force yourself to look at the numbers, you start to twitch and stutter trying to argue, because both arguments become uncomfortable moral dilemma.
And that is my point: "civilized" societies are like children. They want to save everyone; they want to save the butterfly from the spider, but the spider starves to death. They want to take the teeth and claws away from the rabbit and tell it to play nice with the fox, but the fox is going to eat it (i.e. non-violence zero-tolerance bullshit; you might be able to win a fight, but you won't want to mug someone that is going to send you off with their purse and a broken arm). They want to run away from uncomfortable truths and instead look at other uncomfortable truths and say, "We should fix this!"
It's nice that you want to help people--and you should! But you also need to understand that there is a balance to the world, and that you need to tip it gently to maximize the benefit. I want homeless people to be miserable and hungry on the street covering their face with a newspaper to keep from getting sunburned; I don't want them to be miserable and starving on the street covering their face to hide the rotting flesh from the infections and sores they have because they can't find even the smallest bits of food or the most basic of medical care or even clean their body and their clothes. I know it's harsh, but I can probably reach that goal with 1% of my taxes; giving them all apartments, food, and world-class medical care would take like a third of everyone's paycheck in taxes. Living on the street sucks, but I don't want it to suck that fucking bad; if I could magic up a perfect world I would, but I can't, so we must find the balance.
That is enlightenment. Or at least a step along the path; just as you will never reach true enlightenment, you will never reach the perfect world, even one where we haven't saved everyone but we've done the absolute best we can. The economic climate, the cultural climate, the political climate changes; what we can and can't do changes; we have to ease up or we can put more in, sometimes it becomes cheaper because technology makes things better and we can supply things that would cost 10 times more before for only 1% additional cost (say non-invasive surgery that corrects a chronic condition and costs about 20 minutes of time, nearly no materials, using a $10,000 machine with $2000/year maintenance cycle-- where before it was a $250,000 operation. Well, now we can supply that to everyone for damn near nothing, and the cost to society is near nothing
And you missed the point by attacking the example argument.
This is a fundamental part of enlightenment thinking, and one of the cornerstones of liberal democracies.
Another fundamental part of enlightened thinking is that there is a balance: if 1% complain their rights are being trampled (and they're right), but in order to ensure their human rights (in whole or in part) we have to trample the rights of the other 99%, then too fucking bad. This argument is often lost in various terms of wealth redistribution, where people are all-for or all-against; both sides are wrong. Yes, poor people inherently have a right to life and comfort, food and shelter, cleanliness, etc; unfortunately, we can't save everyone, and we can't give them everything, and we shouldn't say "well anything above X is too much so we'll take 100%--sorry, let's be fair then--95% of your money above there."
For this discussion I'm going to avoid arguing semantics and citations on whether a position is "correct" or not. If you think my assessment of what's feasible is wrong, good for you; I don't, and I don't care to argue it. There is a more subtle point here, so try to get it.
My current stock example is healthcare. In a nutshell, insurance is an exclusive voluntary wealth redistribution scheme: you pay into it for benefit, but we can kick you out. There are rules that give you rights (can't just say oh you're expensive, bye now), but also rules that you must follow (if you defraud the system, you're gone). Unfortunately supporting EVERYONE is expensive, and anyone with pre-existing conditions is stuck with them lest they game the system (and besides, it's a fast way to relieve a load). This is why you try to stay continuously insured throughout your life. A system that attempts to provide 100% healthcare for everyone in all situations will necessarily collapse, and all systems that purport to are imperfect due to costs (hell, even free-market systems are imperfect due to costs and practicality).
So now that the stage is set, I'll take the obvious stance opposite yours first; there's a follow-up later, so try to absorb this. You've probably heard it before. Supplying socialized healthcare is a failed plan: it's expensive, it forces everyone to pay for everyone else, the homeless on the street with no job (lazy or unfortunate, it is indifferentiable) are simply too much of a drain on the rest of society to do this. We can't care for them like puppies while they rack up tons and tons of healthcare costs and time, clogging the system and preventing healthier people from maintaining their health (no, the stance "this person is worse off, so it's okay that you should be dragged into a pit of eternal suffering so that they can be raised up to parity with that level of suffering as well" is not "enlightened": now you have two people in a shit situation, one who is in a less-shit situation and one who was just fine that is now miserable).
The stock argument I've been making lately, however, is based around a simple observation: The middle and upper class are effectively all cared for, and the system doesn't collapse. Why? Doesn't that invalidate my above argument? It's not an "exclusive" system so much as it's "anyone who has the money can get in."
Actually, no, not entirely.
Homeless people, poor people, people who can't afford health insurance, they are all in essence dirty street rats. They live on the streets, don't eat well, eat garbage, don't shower, they lead stressful lives, expose themselves to constant health hazards, etc. Insuring these people is infeasible because they are so god damn unhealthy--and insuring the entire middle class is feasible exactly because wealth translates to health indirectly, due to access to better food and cleaner facilities and shelter and clothes and lower stress. The poor are often substance abusers for reasons I don't entirely understand--they smoke and they drink a lot, and cigarette and alcohol taxes are really taxes on poor people more than anything.
So
The even cooler news is 1/7.3 or 13.7% of their users migrated away in one month. Imagine Slashdot losing 10 million users? That happens like every day; the flux is probably on the order of 40 million. When you don't have 2.8 billion page hits an hour though, losing ten or twenty million users is pretty big.
A little editorial, it's really sad how many people don't know how to play chess anymore. I mean, it's gotta be in the 95% range for people younger than 30.
And then when I do find someone to play... I can't even dig into the database cause it's not like they are going to be really any good. [Lucky if they can remember the moves]
Heck I'm glad computers can "play chess".
Take up Go, if you have the time. http://www.gokgs.com/ for lots of online play. It might break your brain though.
A computer beating another computer is not the same as a computer beating a human that the other computer beat. Go playing computers often resign when they are behind and see no way to get ahead, for example; higher level players will assess if there is still aji, and try, and sometimes win. In many cases it takes subtle plays that are ill-understood; some things only Go Seigen can do, because nobody else in the world can see like he does.
There are many types of successful Go players with very different strategies in the upper ranks. Go Seigen was the best: his plays are subtle, impossible for anyone else to see coming and sometimes hard to understand even once they're played. Not understanding your opponent's move is the first step to losing (unless he doesn't understand it either). Go Seigen is amazing, but he is not an all-powerful Goban-dominating god; he is, to a degree, only marginally better than other players whose strategies basically entail "oh fuck it, I'll just grab some territory here while threatening an invasion that's never going to work anyway" (invasion doesn't work because it's easily blocked, but the other guy HAS to block).
Computer chess players I don't believe can really do some of the things humans can either. Humans will see things, start following a path that ends badly for them, but notice that it lines them up for a quick assassination: in chess, you only have to checkmate. Humans will, in Go, see plays that allow for numerous varied strategies, contingency plans: not just sequences of moves, but ideas like "expand moyo here, or reduce their moyo this way, in either case forming two eyes as I go, invading first and then retreating to solidify my position." We just look, see sequences of dozens of moves, then start scattering possible "if I didn't get this or that" (because my opponent plays every turn too) and recognizing where we would have blocked etc to prevent cuts, squeezes, and the like, and what plays are serious threats, making up microstrategies and assembling them.
I dislike Chess, it is a child's game for simple minds; but humans will always have a creative edge that may give them a leg-up over a "better" computer player. Humans do shit you don't expect, and they see shit that you can't work out. We think abstractly.
Agreed. Punitive retaliation should be non-serious. Don't deliver a knock-out blow to the head (brain damage), but a lash across the face is painful and distressing and ... harmless. A proper body blow is also harmless. Punching someone in the throat can be fatal, easily. Negative reinforcement is awesome, because as long as I can get away with it without personal danger I'm pretty good; but I really hate being backhanded across the face, even if it's relatively harmless.
Go in the Olympics would be ridiculous. I guess something like a 45 min match with 3 x 30 second byo-yomi would be normal (there are some professional tournaments like this), or Canadian byo-yomi (10/25 would be appropriate), but really have you seen the Mejin cup?
Curling involves enough strategy and rapid computation to be a semi-mental sport suitable for the Olympics. Go is awesome, but I think it's misplaced in a competition that revolves around running, pole vaulting, throwing shit, sticking an ice skate in your ass and going balls-first down an ice chute, etc. Archery should be an Olympic sport; if you want to put Go in there, you need a different kind of collective competition (like, mind olympics or some shit, Go/Shogi (fuck Western chess)/Scrabble/Luzanqi (or Stratego, which may be better) and so on).
Seriously? Go matches last like 2-3 days, played in 12 hour rounds. 36 hours is pretty normal. In the amateur sphere, we'll play a game in anywhere from 15 with 5 x 30 sec Byo-Yomi (you get 5, after 30 seconds you use it up, but if you don't take 30 seconds to make the move then the move is not made and you have 30 seconds next round... so if you play 15 moves, 3 of which take more than 30 seconds but less than 60, you have 2 Byo-Yomi periods remaining) to 30 minutes with 5 x 30 or with 10/25 canadian Byo-Yomi (10 minutes to make 25 plays, after 25 moves it resets to 15 minutes again). Professionals, however, will burn 10 hours in the first 50 moves.
You mean like worthless poor fucktards in the city that have an expensive-looking, shiny car but a really shitty house they can barely afford mortgage or heating on, but they do have a 53 inch plasma TV; and the ones that can't afford a shiny car instead lease a BMW so they have a BMW to show off how fucking cool they are driving a 710?
And this is another reason I play Go. When I level up on KGS, and then go to Starbucks and play some kid, I bring my level with me: if I can beat 8kyus this week on KGS, I can beat an 8kyu kid in a coffee shop that was whooping me last month. When you get banned from WoW, you have to start back at level 1.
Chess has some pretty weird aspects that stem from its simplicity.
Try playing Go. The cheating mechanism is called the Sleeve of God. The game is played taking alternate turns placing non-moving pieces that all have exactly the same value. Captures are made by completely contact-surrounding groups, with contact on the four cardinal directions.